


Stars Red, Night Blue

by semperama



Category: Star Trek RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1960s, Love Confessions, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-03
Updated: 2018-03-03
Packaged: 2019-03-26 09:14:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13854705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/semperama/pseuds/semperama
Summary: Zach finds him exactly where he expects him to be, tucked in a dark corner of a dark patio with his shoes kicked off and his socks stuffed inside them. A cigarette in one hand, and a white curl of smoke against the black sky. Suit jacket a pool of wrinkles on the unused wrought-iron chair behind him.





	Stars Red, Night Blue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chaibrows](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaibrows/gifts).



> A lil birthday present for the super rad Catherine. I apologize that this has like zero 60s ambience whatsoever, but I TRIED. <33

Zach finds him exactly where he expects him to be, tucked in a dark corner of a dark patio with his shoes kicked off and his socks stuffed inside them. A cigarette in one hand, and a white curl of smoke against the black sky. Suit jacket a pool of wrinkles on the unused wrought-iron chair behind him.

“You know, they’ve just passed drunk enough to start dancing in there,” Zach says, jerking his thumb back toward the house behind them. He can still hear the music out here, but it’s faint, as is the drone of voices and laughter. “Thought you’d be eager to join in.”

Chris snorts. He glances at Zach, then away again. “Yeah, right.”

When he holds out his cigarette, Zach jumps at the invitation. Their fingers brush when he plucks it from Chris’s hand.

“You’re probably depriving some poor couple of a good make out spot, hovering out here in the dark,” he says around a cloud of smoke.

“Alright, you get one more shot, and that’s it.” Chris crosses his arms over his chest and turns, eyebrows raised in challenge. He’s pushed his sleeves up to his elbows and jerked his tie loose. Always treating clothing like a prison, this man. It’s enough to drive Zach crazy.

“What is it this time?” Zach drawls. “Got tired of people mistaking you for Paul?”

Chris’s lip curls at that, almost a sneer. “I like how you pretend you’re on a first name basis with the Hollywood elite.”

Well, he’s really in a mood tonight, isn’t he? Zach takes one more pull off the cigarette and then hands it back—Chris obviously needs it more. “I like how you pretend you aren’t. You’re the one who was technically invited to this party. I’m a lowly plus one.”

“They sent an invite to everyone who worked on the movie. I think I saw a couple grips wandering around in there.”

“Who’re you trying to fool, Pine? They all love you.” Zach waves his arm, a gesture meant to encompass Hollywood at large. “This whole damn town loves you.”

Chris frowns, turns his back and wanders to the edge of the patio, where the stone stops and the grass begins. Unsure whether he’s supposed to follow, Zach stays planted where he is and shoves his hands deep in his pockets. They feel empty now, and useless.

It’s not unusual for Chris to get maudlin on nights like these, when he’s between projects and forced to rub elbows with stars he barely knows. Networking has never been his strong suit. Schmoozing isn’t his style, and he doesn’t like being schmoozed either. It grates at him that he can’t coast to the top on talent alone, can’t get offered the same roles as Newman and Jimmy Stewart and, hell, Steve McQueen—not unless he knows the right hands to shake and smiles nice at all the empty compliments he gets. The pretty face means they love him automatically, but it doesn’t mean they give him what he wants. Zach knows all this, and yet something seems different tonight. Worse, somehow. Chris seems unreachable.

“Why don’t we get out of here, huh?” Zach asks. “No one’ll miss us.”

It’s a last ditch effort, one he doesn’t expect to work, but he’s surprised when he sees Chris turn toward him, the corner of his mouth curling a little. He takes the last drag off the cigarette and then squats down to stub it out on the patio. Sparks fly up and then die. He tosses the butt into a planter nearby.

“Now you’re talking,” he says. Maybe he was just waiting for someone to give him permission. He rolls his eyes at Zach’s smile, plucks his socks out of his shoes, and shoves them balled-up in his back pocket. “What’d you have in mind?”

———

Chris rides in the passenger seat of his own flashy Thunderbird with his feet up on the dash, bare and only half-shoved into his shoes. Though the night has grown chilly, he refused to let Zach put the top up. Another lit cigarette dangles from his fingers. Zach keeps sneaking glances at him out of the corner of his eye; he’s lucky the roads are empty at this hour, and lucky, too, that Chris seems too far in his own head to notice Zach’s scrutiny. 

The bar they stop at isn’t even nice enough to be called a dive. It’s so dark inside Zach has to stop a minute to let his eyes adjust before leading Chris to a table in the back. On the tiny, sticky-looking dance floor, two couples dance, pressed a little closer than they might be in a nicer place or if they’d had a few less to drink. One of the women is barefoot and up on her tiptoes to keep her partner’s neck in a death grip. _That could be us,_ Zach thinks. Chris’s feet are halfway to bare already. But he wouldn’t have to get up on his toes to hang onto Zach that way.

As if any of that would ever happen.

A middle-aged waitress in a dress far too short for her comes over and takes their order—two bourbons—then retreats to the bar, where the bartender looks half-asleep and less than thrilled to be spending his Saturday night in such a dump. It figures that Chris finally seems to be perking up, his fingers drumming against the underside of the table, one of his knees nudging Zach’s.

“How’d you find this place?” he asks, looking around like there’s anything to look at. The walls are a bare, greasy dark green. Other than the few people on the dance floor, there’s just one other table occupied, a woman with two men.

“Bad date.” Zach grimaces at the memory. This is exactly the kind of place you want to come to if you’re out with a guy and want to be discreet—and exactly the kind of place Zach would never care to be. He can be discreet all on his own and wait until he’s behind closed doors to express what he wants to express. But given how empty it is, he figured it would be exactly the kind of out-of-the-way spot Chris needs tonight. 

Chris tips closer to him, eyebrows going up. “Someone brought you _here_ on a date? Shit, man. Hope there wasn’t a second.”

“There wasn’t.” The poor choice of venue wasn’t the whole reason though. The other half the reason is sitting across the table from Zach now.

Pining doesn’t look good on him. Does it look good on anyone? He wrinkles his nose and looks down at the tabletop, relieved when the waitress chooses that moment to reappear with their drinks. Chris wraps a broad hand around his and draws it close to him but doesn’t pick it up yet. 

“You think _I_ could get away with bringing a date here?” His voice is light, but Zach can tell he’s a little serious too.

He snorts. “No, I don’t think even a face like yours can overcome a place like this.”

“A face like mine?” Chris rolls his eyes. “It’s a curse.”

“Oh, spare me.” 

They lift their glasses in unison and clink them together. Chris drains half of his in one gulp, but Zach barely manages a tiny sip around the sudden lump in his throat. The jukebox changes over and a Frank Sinatra tune comes on, and Zach is struck by the thought that this moment could be any moment in the past decade or so. He and Chris sitting quietly somewhere. Frank Sinatra in the background. Zach wishing he had the right words to bring that rare sparkle to Chris’s eyes—or, hell, he’d settle for any words at all. Anything that isn’t trite or empty. Anything Chris could accept as _real_.

“So, what’s next for you?” he says in the end, because some conversation is better than sitting here stewing.

“Oh, I don’t know. I’ll probably run away and join the circus.” Chris grins, amused at his own overused joke. “Think I’d make a good lion tamer?”

Zach gives him a shove. “A decent clown, maybe.” Then, more seriously, “Seriously, Chris, what’s up with you tonight?”

Chris scoffs at that, as if it should be obvious. As if it is _ever_ obvious what’s going on in that head of his. “I’m just feeling a little jaded. You know how I get.”

“Yeah, I know, but you seem more...you than usual tonight.”

“Gee, thanks.” He scrubs a hand over his face and drains his glass. It will almost certainly be a while before the waitress sees fit to bring him another. “It’s the fakeness that gets to me. A girl came up to me tonight and told me this movie was her favorite of mine. I asked her what part she liked best, and she just laughed, like I’d made a joke. Well, whatever the joke was, I sure wasn’t in on it.”

“The joke is that you don’t know a line when you hear one, Christopher.” Zach forces himself to take another drink, hoping it’ll hide the bitterness that threatens to show on his face. 

“No, I know it was a line, but why does everything have to be a goddamn line? She could have started a conversation a million ways, but that’s what she chose to say.”

Zach shrugs one shoulder. “People like to have their ego stroked. She assumed you’d be the same.”

“Well, I’m not.”

No he isn’t, and Zach loves that about him, genuinely. But he also hates it, because it makes it so hard to weasel his way in through that armor Chris has wrapped around himself. Most people have their weak spots, the places you can pry apart to get at their soft center, but somehow Chris manages to wear his weak spots on his sleeve and _still_ keep himself protected. He has little faith in himself, and yet compliments won’t touch him. He assumes the best of others, and yet anyone who’s too nice to him must be a liar. It’s enough to drive a man crazy.

“You shouldn’t take it so much to heart,” Zach says quietly. He lets himself place a hand on Chris’s wrist—on his bare skin, since his sleeves are still rolled up to his elbows. “Sure, there’s a lot of fakes in this town, but you know you have people who genuinely care about you.”

“Yeah,” Chris concedes, on the end of a long sigh. “Yeah, I guess you’re right about that much.”

He’s probably thinking about his parents. His sister. That motley crew he calls an entourage, the ones who have followed him around for years. Zach has followed him around for years too, but somehow he doesn’t get the impression he’s fully earned Chris’s trust yet, not in the ways that count.

It would be so easy to tell him now, to lean in and whisper it in his ear and watch his face as he tries to believe it. It’s what comes after that would be hard. The rejection. The anger.

The only thing that saves him is Chris pushing back from the table, wriggling his glass in his hand. “Need a refill,” he says, and is gone before Zach can stop him.

———

They head home two drinks later. Well, two for Chris, barely one for Zach, who never seemed to be able to take more than a sip at a time. Chris is pleasantly buzzed now, sprawled boneless on the seat next to Zach with his head tipped back, the streetlights glinting off the dewey skin of his neck. He doesn’t say anything the whole ride back to his house, so neither does Zach. The silence is nice, anyway. Companionable.

Zach parks the car in the drive and climbs out, then walks around to the other side to haul Chris out too. Not that Chris is quite drunk enough for the manhandling, but he’s lethargic at least, and Zach doesn’t need much of an excuse.

“Let me walk you home,” Chris says.

Zach shakes his head. “You’re dead on your feet.”

Chris doesn’t argue. He settles his arm around Zach’s waist, and Zach puts his arm around Chris in turn, and they walk that way all the way up to the front door. Even then, Chris doesn’t let go. Doesn’t say anything either. Just sways against Zach, staring at his own door, like he’s working up the nerve to say something.

“You could come inside,” he says at last, quietly.

Zach’s heart leaps in his chest. Chris has known his...his sexual preferences for years and has mercifully kept his secret, but he hasn’t given the slightest hint of being interested himself. The world may be shifting slightly, the free love of the 60s drowning out the nigh-puritanical perfection of the post-war years, but things are far from easy for someone like Zach, especially here in Hollywood. The most he can hope for is that those closest to him turn a blind eye. And yet.

“Chris.” He doesn’t know what else to say. His fingers tighten on Chris’s waist.

“I know you want to,” Chris says. He drops his head a little, and the porch light illuminates just half of his frown, the perfect shell of one ear. “And maybe I want you to.”

“Maybe?” Zach pulls away then. He needs to see Chris’s face for this, no matter how scary or painful it may be. “I’m going to need more than a ‘maybe’.”

“You want me.” 

Chris lifts his chin, defiant, and that’s what does it. That’s what finally breaks something in Zach, makes him reach out and grab the front of Chris’s shirt and jerk him close.

“I _love_ you, you idiot.”

The kiss is a bad idea, but it feels like a good one in the moment, especially when he slides his hand up under Chris’s jaw and gets him to tilt his head back so he can lick into his mouth, really take advantage of this before it gets snatched away from him. _I love you._ He only thinks it this time, because he can’t bring himself to tear his lips from Chris’s long enough to breathe, but he hopes if he thinks it loud enough, Chris will hear it and believe it. _I love you, I love you, I love you._

When they do break apart, they are both breathing hard, and Chris doesn’t look mad so much as shocked. He touches his fingers to his own mouth, shaking his head as if in disbelief. Zach carefully lets go of his shirt and takes a step back.

“I should go,” he says. He backs up again, and almost trips down the front step. “I’ll just—”

But a hand shoots out quick as a flash and catches him by the wrist, holding him in place with a grip like a vice. When his gaze lifts to Chris’s face again, Chris still looks stunned, but there’s something else there now. Something a little like understanding. Zach doesn’t dare hope, until…

“You should come inside,” Chris says, “and maybe say that to me again.”

“I’ll say it as much as you want,” Zach says breathlessly. He’s the one stunned now. He's waiting for the punchline.

“Inside,” Chris repeats. He doesn’t let go of Zach’s hand as he fishes for his keys. He doesn’t let go as they step through the door. He doesn’t let go at all, and doesn’t give Zach time to wish he’d said something sooner. It’s enough to say it now, and to see that Chris believes it.


End file.
